When New Jersey’s labor department announced the October jobs stats in mid-November, showing another decline in employment, it included the typical revision of the numbers from the month before.

Ironically, and probably unhappily for Gov. Jon Corzine, that revision shows that Corzine’s labor department overstated job losses in September by 2,100 jobs — meaning the final pre-election snapshot of the state’s economy showed things to be a bit worse than they actually were. September still wasn’t a good month, with jobs down 10,600, but it was less bad. (Nobody’s complaining now that jobs numbers were being manipulated for political purposes.)

In fact, even after October’s loss of 1,800 jobs, there were 300 more jobs in the state at the end of October than there were originally believed to have been at the end of September.

October’s job performance included a drop of 4,400 private sector jobs, offset partially by an increase of 2,600 public sector jobs.

Since the recession begin in December 2007, private sector employment is down by 168,300 and is now at its lowest level since December 1998. Public employment is up by 100.

New Jersey’s unemployment rate ticked down in October to 9.7%, one of 13 states to report a drop. That was its first decline since May 2007.

In October, 29 states reported job increases, most of them small. Still, that’s the most since February 2008, says the Economic Policy Institute.